If you have a PAL DVCam and you downloaded your movies as .AVI can it be possible to change the video format of DV PAL going to NTSC Standard before the editing. In adobe Premier before you open it there is a selection which format you want to select b-4 starting on a new Project. Can you choose NTSC standard or NTSC DV even if u have an AVI files downloaded from a PAL DVCam. Also in Sonic Foundry Vegas 4.0 in the properties of the clip (.avi)is it possible to change the video format to NTSC Video CD even if your clips was captured from a PAL DV Camera. I've tried it once and it gave me an image with black portions on both sides of the clip. Can this kind clips can be encoded as mpeg1 and be burned for VCD. CHEERS!

-- Mel Torres (ojotek@hotmail.com), June 03, 2003

Answers

There are two approaches to this that I know. The first which gives the best results so far that I'm aware is, after having captured your PAL DV AVI clips onto your HDD (with the Premiere capture applet, for example) is to convert them to NTSC with a tool called aDVanced DV converter, a program specifically for PAL/NTSC conversions mainly of DV AVI (but also of other codec AVIs) written by Attila Mezei. You have to fork bucks for registration but it's a very handy tool for system conversion for those regularly engaged in having to, for example, author DVDs from DV AVI clips in PAL or NTSC and not having to buy PAL and NTSC camcorders separately. After successful conversion you verify individual clip properties with Premiere to ascertain they're duly PAL or NTSC, before opening a new project with the requisite template and then including these clips in the project bin. Choosing a certain template in Premiere DOES NOT convert any of the clips you include and can produce unpredictable results. There are facilites in Premiere to work around this (for example u intend to output in NTSC, have NTSC clips, and just a few seconds of a PAL clip); you can use the "interpret footage" command. Those do NOT produce true conversions and ARE intended as just that: workarounds. I have learned that conversion between PAL and NTSC is not taken casually and $10000 dollar equipment (from Snell and Wilcox, for example) are routinely used to achieve this as naturally as possible in realtime in broadcast situations on one end of the scale, and on the other are VHS VCRs from TenLab, Samsung and Aiwa that can effect the same from VHS tapes, albeit with much more wretched results. The one thing going for us is that DV AVI is already digital and on the HDD and for the money that Attila Mezei asks for his program and the level of quality it produces I think it's great value.

-- Mehmet Tekdemir (turk690@yahoo.com), June 03, 2003.

Other options for this conversion include buying the software encoder Procoder (about $600 US) which does an excellent job of NTSC<->PAL conversion and using the AVISynth program to do this. Some scripts have been written for AVISynth to do this kind of conversion and I've been told it works very well.

-- Root (root@yahoo.moc), June 04, 2003.

Thanks guys, but do you think TMPGenc plus can also sort this thing for me?

-- Mel Torres (ojotek@hotmail.com), June 04, 2003.

TMPGenc DOES NOT convert PAL>NTSC and vice-versa. You can try for yourself and see the jerky output that's produced on choosing a PAL template and deliberately giving an NTSC clip for input. Within its very narrow confines TMPGenc attempts to resample and interpolate (depending of course on the settings you choose) the number of lines (say, 480>576) but nothing that looks good can be done for the frame rate, (repeating every 5th frame in PAL>NTSC, and dropping every 6th frame in NTSC>PAL) hence the jerky output. Note now and bear in mind and do believe that NTSC-PAL conversions are very involved processes that is practically an art in itself in the NLE/broadcasting worlds. Huge bucks and lengthy and complicated considerations are involved here to even get a semblance of quality on the output. It IS NOT something for an evening's tinkering. TMPGenc IS intended primarily for encoding to MPEG, NOT for converting from PAL>NTSC.

-- Mehmet Tekdemir (turk690@yahoo.com), June 04, 2003.

I found another way to do this conversion, its a little bit complicated though. Basically, after being frustrated with TmpegEnc's jerky "conversion", i decided to try and slow the PAL movie down in VIRTUALDUB, from 25fps to 23.976 in the framerate control. Once this was finished, I had the enitire clip in NTSC FILM format. As for the sound, I opened it in Cool Edit Pro, and stretched it to match the new EXACT length of the NTSCFILM version, while preserving pitch. One the audio was processed, I rejoined the audio and video in Vitualdub, and it was perfect. I was able to burn the moving to an SVCD (encoded in TMPEGENC), and it worked fine.

-- Matt (btxn1982@telus.net), July 20, 2003.

If you have Adobe Premiere then open up the file in it and then read the help file, search for "frame rate" and do the one that says "Comnvert the frame rate with the action" or summut, then output it in NTSC format and, voila! (it worked for me with pal<- >ntsc, ime english, ya no!

-- Johnson J. Johnson (john@jjohnson.com), January 18, 2004.